The experience and problems of the Vietnamese refugees in the United States provides an important opportunity to examine the mental health difficulties of forced migrants placed in different types of receiving communities and social environments. Although an individual's psychological well-being is recognized to be commonly linked to fulfilling social relationships with those of similar values and experience, the policy of the federal government toward the Vietnamese refugees encouraged their rapid assimilation into American society by placing the great majority in numerous locations across the country. A noticeable minority of the refugees are suffering from emotional stress requiring professional attention but is not clear what the relationship between these problems and the influence of various environmental factors may be. The objectives of the research proposed here are to achieve a detailed understanding of: (a) Those factors which have facilitated or hampered the efforts of Vietnamese refugees to cope with their new environments; (b) The nature of the stress experienced; and (c) those combinations of characteristics of individual refugees and their receiving environments which result in different types of successful or unsuccessful responses. Research among Vietnamese in four very different receiving communities is proposed in South Alabama and West Florida, the Washington, D.C. area, San Diego, California, and Des Moines, Iowa. Systematic interviews of from 150-250 Vietnamese heads of households will be conducted in each community at three different points in time in 1977, 1978 and 1979-80, to determine respondents' background, experience, attitudes and symptoms of stress. Interview among selected community members and telephone surveys will also be carried out to determine the nature of community attitudes toward, and experience with, Vietnamese refugees. The study of the experience of different types of refugees in four quite varied communities at different points in time would be a useful contribution to the bio-social sciences which would also provide information useful in the formation of social policy.